With the imminent arrival of GDPR and consumer concern about their data at an all time high isnt it time for the marketing industry to produce a Data Privacy Seal? The current situation is unsustainable, chiefly because of:

Bewildering array of opt-in/out-out design on webforms

Bewildering array of super long privacy policies which are often indeciphereable

Bewildering array of interpretations of what constitutes safe data handling

No wonder consumers are bewildered when marketing experts are still struggling to get their head around this. Understanding GDPR is one thing, implementing it is another.This time is now for the industry to come together to produce a uniform standard consumer facing brand to safe collection, processing and storing of consumer data.An industry created Data Privacy Badge means it could be added to all webforms (anywhere where data is collected). This will give:

Confidence to consumers their data wont be sold and will be used properly in line with GDPR.

Confidence to marketers that they are collecting and using data properly

Confidence to the ICO that companies are seeking to comply and prefer to use a widely agreed version rather than try to interpret meanings from GDPR

The online advertising industry adopted the widely recognised AdChoices (for Personalisation) programme years ago, the direct marketing industry (which cant exist without data) version is long overdue.The direct marketing world can only function with the permission of its audience, Today that permission can be rescinded at any point more easily than ever. The answer is to gain long term trust from consumers all over again.A Data Privacy badge backed by an agreed set of rules means a UK wide Privacy Policy can be adopted by all companies collecting data which the public can actually understand and trust. Stop and imagine that for a second - a standard Privacy Policy that all companies can link to and which everyone understands AND more importantly everyone TRUSTS!)GDPR should only be seen as a kick start to the process of making consumers feel safe when using their data to infinity and beyond...

Wednesday, 22 November 2017 by Peter Bell

Why GDPR is Direct Marketing's BREXIT

"Can we at least shake on GDPR?" (credit:The Independent)

Last week, it struck me how these two phrases, forever etched on marketing peoples brains, have a surprising amount in common with each other...

Consider:

Neither outcome is fully known until deadlines come and go

We are preparing for both best we can on limited guidance available

We are inundated with so called experts, doom-mongers and evangelists

They are bound to be some losers, but also big opportunities

But the single humongous problem affecting our business lives today is that we lack certainty. The stuff that we crave in order to design and execute change plans is rarer than the prospect of Barnier and Davis swapping presents this Christmas.

Informed guesswork is the name of the game here with those who feel theyre sailing close to the wind now (you know who you are) will likely court the wrath of the ICO GDPRstyle in 2018, unless business models are torn up and new strategies adopted.

The best policy (outside of an official one) is to use common sense. Many blogs ago, I suggested such common sense rules called the The Granny Test for those of you unsure how to apply best practice to consumer privacy and consent. The basic premise is before hitting go on that latest direct marketing campaign, think how your granny would feel about receiving it. If the impact worries you, hit pause and think again. I think this interpretation still holds well today in the absence of any explicit rules to follow.

May the marketing force be with you (youll need it!)

Wednesday, 19 April 2017 by Peter Bell

How to Solve Marketing's Consent / Privacy Dilemna

Image https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/6022973168

Make no bones about it Privacy and Consent are now the biggest buzzwords in Direct Marketing. Cut to frantic scenes in compliance and marketing departments across the UK trying to figure out what the best approach is to take...

Is it a question of damned if you do and damned if you dont?

But before we all start ripping up marketing techniques that have been tried and tested over the last twenty years (since Data Protection Act of 1998 and 2003s PECR), lets start with performing a simple test on how you treat marketing communications with prospects and customers by applying The Granny Test:

Put yourselves in the shoes of your granny and think how she would feel if she received the latest DM pack, email or phone-call as part of a direct-marketing campaign. Youll get one of two answers:

Shes worried/concerned/surprised to hear from the brand

She understands the reason for contact and accept/ignores or declines the offer

Of course, eliciting answer No.2 means youve probably got the correct consent/opt-in whilst respecting her privacy. Anything else, means you have to go back down the mine and work out why your granny doesnt understand the reason for contact.

Best practice is no longer an aspiration but the absolute minimum for direct marketing post GDPR. GDPR sounds onerous (it is in terms of administration!) but does attempt to crystalise how everyone would prefer to be contacted via marketing channels. Compliance can no longer be seen as a barrier, but another way to enable better marketing results through fairer legal means.

From personal experience, recent conversations with client brands have resurfaced some age old questions around consent, opt-in and privacy. Actually it is now easier to answer those questions with a stricter ICO interpretation of data laws using GDPR.

One such dilemma is Should we use company name or brand name opt-in statement? On the face of it, the benefits of a company wide opt-in are obvious, offering multiple brand opt-ins and total communication flexibility. However caution must be urged - do your prospects/customers most commonly associate with the brand or the company? Apply the Granny Test and youll quickly get the answer you need! Under GDPR using a company opt-in to send marketing comms from a brand a prospect is unfamiliar with, is likely to suffer the wrath of the ICO as you will need to prove that the original opt-in consent scope is tight enough to allow this type of brand contact.

It seems only yesterday that pressure on companies to get serious about consent was at breaking point but looking back to 2015 the red flags were flying and highlighted (in no subtle terms) in a previous blog How to fix Direct Marketing Biggest Problem

2018 will be the year of reckoning for all those in the Direct Marketing game, so spend 2017 huddling together to solve your Consent / Privacy dilemmas, before the ICO (painfully) solves it for you.

Constant social media updates flood our news feeds daily about how yet another industry is disrupted by new technology.... and how wonderful this is because now a computer automates a task faster and cheaper than ever before.

But wait... theres a catch or more a hidden story. That is, the lives of the people this technology disrupts. Disruption is rarely all good, indeed the definition is: disturbance or problems that interrupt an event, activity, or process - doesnt sound too rosy now, does it? Yet we are sold on the idea that disruption by tech is all good, inevitable, unavoidable and that if we cant see the advantage now, we will all benefit in the future.

Take Uber as a classic example of disruptive technology. The platform disrupts by removing the inconvenience of getting a taxi at short notice which was an inherent flaw with the offline taxi rank/office/black cab industry. So far, so good. However looking at the numbers, this company just cant make money with its current driver model. It just lost another $800m last quarter and on track to lose $3 billion by year end! It wont take a genius to guess that it will only ever likely turn a profit when a driverless model is the prevailing service.

So like the offline taxi model, Uber appears to carry a flaw (this time weighing c. 62kg) in its underlying model. As an Uber user, I like the convenience but I also love that fact that Uber provides someone with a new way to earn an income. Without a 62kg human driver, I could quite easily fall out of love with Uber.

Next time you are sold the next great tech disruption consider the downsides and how maybe technology should be evaluated on the enhancement it makes to us humans rather than purely as a cool disruptive influence. With this kind of thinking, better, more profitable and an altogether more humanistic approach can create tech business models that mutually benefit customers, employees and society at large (and dont even get me started on big corp taxes!).

Lurking underneath is the potential for a vast Uberesque style total robotisation of marketing and inparticular direct marketing.

Back in 2014, Forbes were already making predictions about how marketing robots will easily overcome any human objections in time and so change the future of marketing.That future is now...

Take a look at all those other industries that claimed gut feel and human instinct were the key to success. Were 15 years since Moneyball tactics cracked baseball wide open. It is probably mostly down to human resistance that further contagion in sports still only ripples across NBA Championship basketball (Golden State Warriors, 2015 winners) and Premier League football (Leicester City, 2015/16 winners). The rise of data, via automation to robotisation is an unstoppable truth.

Stop and be honest - consider how your job may be done better by a robot? Once companies have figured this out (for you), the only big players left in town will be those who can collaborate effectively in partnership with robots. The safe(er) jobs in robot marketing world are likely to be across these areas:

Data Analysts/Scientists

Big ticket Account Directors

C level roles (dont think were asking for any robot CEOs just yet!)

Programmers

Creatives/Ideas (but not template design)

As we puny humans, cling on the remnants of the Mad Men advertising era, get ready as we are enter the age of the Sane Robot marketing epoch.